


Cyvasse (this is not a game 'mix)

by Netgirl_y2k



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:47:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26738341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/pseuds/Netgirl_y2k
Summary: Tyrion and Daenerys play their last game of cyvasse.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 27
Collections: Remix Revival 2020





	Cyvasse (this is not a game 'mix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Isis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Game of Cyvasse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23187118) by [Isis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis). 



The cyvasse board was already set before Daenerys Stormborn when Tyrion was escorted into the royal pavilion by two of her guards; one apiece from the Unsullied and the Stormcrows. The guards set themselves just inside the door with the air of men who planned to stay exactly where they were.

“Do you remember the first time we played cyvasse together, Your Grace?”

“We were in the Great Pyramid of Meereen,” said Daenerys with a vague wave to their indifferent surroundings. The queen’s _pavilion_ was little more than the largest tent that could be found in the siege camp clustered beyond the gates of King’s Landing.

“You did not feel the need to have guards present then.”

Daenerys’ mouth quirked. “I did not know you then as I do now.”

Tyrion inclined his head in acknowledgement; he had always had a keen sense of irony. He used the footstool that had been left there for that purpose to gain his seat opposite Daenerys, not sure whether he should be comforted by the fact that even now the queen felt no need to humiliate him for his stature. 

He picked up one of the cyvasse figures - the queen - from the board and turned it over in his hand. During their crossing from Essos Tyrion had passed the time by whittling the beards from the kings on his faithful wooden cyvasse set to make them passingly resemble queens, but once they reached Westeros Daenerys had commissioned her own set from an artisan in White Harbor: white marble and dragonglass with queens in place of kings. The new game pieces could even be said to resemble Daenerys so long as you squinted, and had never seen the dragon queen up close. 

The dragon pieces too had changed, growing three times in size and ferocity after Daenerys had insisted that they be modelled after her own children. It had been much to the queen’s chagrin that the game could not be played with three dragons on the board.

“I’m afraid that I am somewhat out of practice,” said Tyrion. “I have suffered a dearth of interesting opponents ever since-” he didn’t say the name Varys, and judging from the queen’s scowl, he didn’t have to. 

In the long, tense prelude to the Battle of Winterfell Tyrion had tried to teach Jaime, but his brother had refused to take the game seriously, and trying to teach cyvasse to the Maid of Tarth had been as much of a pointless task as trying to teach Penny.

“I tried to teach Jon Snow-” the queen’s mouth pursed waspishly as it always did now when she mentioned her nephew-lover “-but he was a poor student.”

“Or perhaps you were a poor teacher?” Tyrion suggested. 

Over the years, as they’d travelled together from Meereen to Winterfell to King’s Landing, he had had fallen out of the habit of guarding his tongue around the queen, and it was proving to be a near impossible habit to get back.

Fortunately the queen chose to ignore his provocation and instead said, “I did play one game of note, against Lady Stark.”

“Ah,” said Tyrion. “If there’s anyone in that family who can be said to have a tactical mind then it’s my former wife, but I would not have thought war games would be one of her specialities.”

“She told me that cyvasse was not so very different from the game of thrones; the rabble are the smallfolk, the spearmen squabbling minor nobles, the crossbowmen the spymasters and their little birds, and the siege engines were the Iron Bank.” As Daenerys listed off every piece she removed it from play and set off to one side.

“And who won this game of strategy for the ages?”

Daenerys did not answer, which Tyrion supposed was an answer in itself. “If I have learned anything from cyvasse it’s that everyone is playing a different game. You, for instance, play it to convince yourself that you are so much cleverer than the rest of us.”

“And you play it as though it’s an endless battle between dragons and everything else,” Tyrion countered.

The queen’s side of the board was now empty but for a few paltry pieces surrounding her queen and dragon. “My side of the board is set. Shall I take the liberty of setting yours?”

It wasn’t a question, so Tyrion gestured expansively. “Please do.”

Daenerys set Tyrion’s queen (what had they come to, that Cersei was Tyrion’s queen? Even if only two inches tall and set in marble) behind his fortress, surrounded on two sides by his rabble and catapults.

“I would be better placed to defend my fortress from all sides.”

“I do not have the ships to blockade King’s Landing from the sea,” said the queen.

Ah. “I could not have foreseen the Greyjoys going to war against one another.”

“You told me once that learning this game would make me a better tactician once I went to war.”

“I told you it would make you _seem_ a better tactician,” said Tyrion, who remembered that years ago conversation as though it had been yesterday.

“I was merely a young girl then, but I should have thought to ask whether the man teaching me was himself in any way a good tactician.”

“I suspect, Your Grace,” said Tyrion, “that we have both disappointed each other in many ways.”

Daenerys snorted. “That might be the first thing we have agreed on in quite some time.”

Tyrion looked down at his side of the board. “You aren’t permitting me a dragon?”

“No,” Daenerys said shortly. Tyrion remembered her shriek when Rhaegal had fallen, and the shatter when she’d hurled the marble dragon at the cabin wall.

“I still have my catapults.”

“Catapults cannot kill a dragon,” said Daenerys. In this Tyrion suspected she was right; not so long ago the idea would have thrilled him, now it terrified him. “What you do not have, what your cursed sister no longer has, is Euron Greyjoy’s hellhorn.”

Careless of the the ways dragons were meant to move in cyvasse, Daenerys’ hand shot lightening quick across the board and used her dragon to knock over Tyrion’s fortress, sending his pieces scattering to the floor and under the table.

Tyrion caught her wrist, looked into her eyes and spoke to the girl he’d sat across this board from in Meereen, the girl he believed she’d been in Meereen. “Don’t do this.”

There was a long, drawn out moment then the queen raised her eyes and shook her head slightly, telling her guards not to strike Tyrion down where he sat. She pulled her wrist from his grasp and said with what Tyrion might once have taken for kindness, “I have no choice.”

“Cersei has not packed the Red Keep and city streets with civilians out of the goodness of her heart, she has done it because everything she has heard about Daenerys Targaryen-” everything Tyrion had told her when he attempted to negotiate his sister’s surrender “-has told her that you will not harm innocents.”

“Once she may have been right. But that was before I lost two of my children, before I was betrayed by those who who had sworn to help me reclaim my crown. Before I learned the rules of cyvasse.” Daenerys gripped the dragon piece hard enough that Tyrion could see the blood beading on her fingertips. “Remove Lord Tyrion from my presence and keep him under guard until I have taken the city.”

“I should have ridden the pig,” Tyrion called to Daenerys over his shoulder as he was hauled from the tent. “Or fucked you.” The dragon queen held her hand up and the guards held for a moment. “The day I first began to teach you cyvasse, Missandei told me it was my turn to entertain you and she did not care whether I did it with a pig, in bed, or both.”

Daenerys almost smiled when she said, “I might have enjoyed the pig.” She waved to her guards, dismissing Tyrion from her sight for the final time.


End file.
